Earning the MSM's Trust

by Christopher ChantrillMarch 14, 2007 at 11:30 am

THE mainstream media may be liberal, but you can still get a fair shake from them writes Bruce Bartlett.

More than that, Major newspapers like The Post and New York Times are now pretty even handed in their news coverage compared to the good old days back in the 1970s. Of course the reporters are still liberal and the editorial pages decidedly so. That goes without saying.

Years ago, Bartlett relates, when he was a young Capitol Hill aide, Republicans were taught always to return the calls of the media and always to deal straight with them. Theres a payoff for this.

Over many years, I think Ive earned the trust of a few top reporters at papers considered by conservatives to have a strong liberal bias. They will now take my word for things because Ive never steered them wrong. These reporters have also told me of other people on both sides of the political spectrum that they will never trust or give a break to because they have lied or intentionally misled them.

Of course, if the news coverage isnt as reflexively liberal as it used to be, that means that it has moved to the right. So when liberals complain of todays coverage, they have a point. From their point of view, its not as good as it used to be.

But liberals should stop whining and get a clue, advises Bartlett. The fact is, they got lazy.

They just assumed the major media would automatically take their side, do hit jobs on conservatives and basically do their job for them.

So heres some advice for our liberal friends.

You had a long free ride, and now its over. Get used to it, and learn how to use the media. Take a page from the conservative handbook and go around it. Figure out why talk radio works for conservatives and has dismally failed for liberals. Learn how to marshal facts and argue cogently instead of haranguing people and using ad hominem attacks on those who disagree.

On the other hand, if you prefer, dont change. Just keep on keeping on. We wont stop you.

[The Axial Age] highlights the conception of a responsible self... [that] promise[s] man for the first time that he can understand the fundamental structure of reality and through salvation participate actively in it.Robert N Bellah, "Religious Evolution", American Sociological Review, Vol. 29, No. 3.

Civil Societya complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churchesbuilds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.Francis Fukuyama, Trust

[W]hen I asked a liberal longtime editor I know with a mainstream [publishing] house for a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives, she didn't hesitate. Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists, she offered, smiling but meaning it.Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican

[T]he Liberal, and still more the subspecies Radical... more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able[.]Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State

These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable...
[1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense. Lord Salisbury, Letter to Lord Lytton

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel